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A Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job

250 points by cyphersanctus 12y ago

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
Based on many of the people I've worked with "well enough to get a job" is a pretty low bar to clear.
- mmcru 12y ago
  these comments are always discouraging to me. i work in a different field (sysadmin), and i've been struggling to get a job programming. am i that bad at programming? or that bad at finding work? i feel like i know the basics of several languages as well as html, css, sql and git. i wrote an IT-ticket system for a healthcare clinic in python consisting of a basic html form and a SQL database backend (i know this isn't terribly impressive to adept programmers, but i've been applying to the most entry-level programming positions). i also specialize in powershell, which is object-oriented, even if it isn't used for enterprise level web apps. and that hasn't been nearly enough to get a job, at least in pittsburgh.
  - FreedomFiber 12y ago
    None of the languages you listed are technically programming languages (I guess PowerShell could be considered one, but it's more for automation rather than programming actual applications). Maybe you're using the wrong terminology during your interviews.
    - mmcru 12y ago
      oh definitely, i meant that i knew the basics of python, ruby, and javascript, as well as the other technologies (non-programming languages, as you said).
  - bovermyer 12y ago
    Soft skills are more important than tech skills, especially at entry level. It usually becomes pretty apparent in the interview whether someone is capable of problem solving or not; the interviews conducted for my department are purely to see if the candidate is a cultural fit. We don't even do technical interviews, though occasionally we'll do a code challenge to separate two very close candidates. My point here is that you should take a look at your personal presentation and see if there's anything you can tweak to improve your interview performance.
  - Widow 12y ago
    Full disclosure, I just graduated and really don't know anything of value yet BUT imho building things that are functional and working outside of your dev environment should have more of an influence on your job prospects than the stupid coding exercises.
  - yarper 12y ago
    Do you have a good github account? Most (decent) employers will probably take this in lieu of a technical interview. You have to remember that its not just them testing you - it's you testing them. As a newbie coder you want to be in a good team where you can learn good practices from solid performers. I mean put it this way - if you were in a team and everyone was at a low skill level, do you think you'd get a good time of things from sales/marketing/all the other stakeholders?
    - mmcru 12y ago
      i do have a github, but i don't think i would call it "good": https://github.com/mmcru?tab=repositories https://github.com/mmcru?tab=repositories i can definitely improve it, and that is something i have been working on. thanks for the advice though; i really appreciate it. i agree with you that ideally i would be working under some more senior programmers to improve my skills.
      - ejstronge 12y ago
        I just took a look - I noticed you've got a couple of websites in your list of repositories. Why not host some of these on a personal website? Also, adding a README could help people understand what the scope and goal of each project is (and also help them figure out how to use it/test it).
      - yarper 12y ago
        I also took a look at your contributions - looks a bit spotty! https://github.com/mmcru https://github.com/mmcru No activity in the last month? Something I personally would pick up on.
        mmcru 12y ago
        you're definitely right. unfortunately i've been busy with a move and learning angular, which was new to me, so i haven't had much new code. i plan on adding more this week. thanks for your advice =]
  - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
    Entry level can be pretty different. They're looking at potential rather than ability and things can be competitive (depending on the specific skills or organisation). I'm really thinking about programmers with 5 - 10 years of experience who still struggle to reason their way out of a wet paper bag or produce anything but the most obvious and narrowly scoped solution to problems.
  - IgorPartola 12y ago
    Don't feel bad. The thing is that "good enough to get a job + that's a low bar" means that the people end up way over their heads and usually don't work out. I have interviewed lots of people. Some needed jobs badly. They came in, knowing HTML/CSS + enough jQuery to make a pretty web page, and were applying for a systems architect position. We obviously rejected them, but lots of companies cannot tell between truly qualified people and those that are not. This works both ways: lots of unqualified/underqualified people get hired and then you hear stories like "you won't believe what my co-worker did", but it also means that qualified candidates do get passed up. Basically, don't get discouraged, and don't worry about others getting jobs. Just keep getting better at what you do, and most importantly work on projects that you can show off. I found that these where the best way to get noticed/get hired.
  - ssalenik 12y ago
    What is your background? I know that for a lot of corporate type gigs HR is really more concerned with whats on your CV than what your actual skills are. For many, a good GPA in a programming related program will get you an interview and the rest is soft skills. So, I feel like if your background isn't directly programming related then you really have to look for smaller companies/startups or via recommendations.
  - 3pt14159 12y ago
    Start by always using the correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization. Get a senior developer to look over your code samples and give you feedback, then make sure to have a project out there that people can see and you can link to.
  - nogridbag 12y ago
    Since you don't have a background in software, I would suggest specializing in the language/framework/utility of the day - something like Angular, React, etc. You will have a leg up on the vast majority of developers (the ones who don't read HN). I work for a small startup in the NYC metro area and of course I agree with the parent post. We have a fairly terrible interviewing process. Candidates are phone screened by our non-technical manager and are usually selected for interviews based on domain experience. Nearly all of the people I'm forced to interview have the same background (bachelors in India, sole language is Java, 5-20 years experience in finance industry most coming from big banks Citigroup, BoA, etc). My interview process consists of an onsite coding problem, which is of course controversial. But when none of the people you interview have a github account (some have not even heard of github) or have any sample work, I believe it's important. The vast majority of the candidates sadly cannot create a List and populate it with integers in their language of choice.
    - mmcru 12y ago
      thanks a lot for your post. input from active professionals is invaluable to me. i've actually been working on learning angular for the past few weeks. i've stopped updating my github in that time since i'm just doing basic stuff, but once i finish some more tutorials and documentation i plan on building an angular project to display on my github. are there any particular features that would really catch your eye as someone who hires programmers? any suggestions regarding the coding interview problem? i see http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-... recommended a lot.
      - Bahamut 12y ago
        I wouldn't worry too much about coding interview questions, especially if you're looking to just enter the profession. The most important aspects are showing a willingness to learn and an ability to think critically about problems.
        nogridbag 12y ago
  - Igglyboo 12y ago
    I wouldn't take it too seriously. At the risk of sounding pretentious, the skill level of developers on HN and proggit seem to be much higher than average. For every guy who writes a sweet project in meteor and shows it off to everyone there are 1000 Enterprise Java programmers who do it as a 9-5 and scoff at the idea of hobby programming. If you're passionate and put forth an effort to keep a relevant skill set you're already doing better than most imho.
  - 3minus1 12y ago
    Not having experience is a huge barrier to clear. When trying to get my first job I only had a minor in CS. I had 13 interviews before I got a job, and I had to continually revise my resume. Don't give up. Focus on breadth vs. depth in terms of jobs and knowledge. And don't worry about minimum years experience requirements on job postings. You can get a job that is for someone with 3-5 years experience; they just won't pay you as much.
  - VLM 12y ago
    Getting past HR is a totally different and unrelated skillset from the craft of programming.
  - lazyant 12y ago
    An option is to market yourself as "DevOps" engineer, seriously.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    The problem is that paper experience is not actually a good indicator of anything, but lack of it will keep you out of a job. Recently I've been working with a team of 3 other engineers. 2 Were average if a touch lazy. The third had ~30 years experience on paper. He was without a doubt the most incurious, unproductive, useless programmer I've ever encountered. He must have committed less than 1% of the new code over the last 10 months and most of that was wrong. He was a net drain on team productivity. However the rest of us delivered and now he gets to put another successful project on his resume and look to a recruiter/HR person like he's a useful, productive guy. Where someone like you who likely has some raw talent and just needs some battle-hardening... you may find getting a foot in the door quite hard. I don't really know how to solve this.
    - Nursie 12y ago
      2 more things. Firstly, I suppose one solution would have been for management to pay attention to the atmosphere.on the team and do some sort of productivity assessments on their staff. Secondly - to get a start somewhere good I would (if you don't have a tech degree or experience) show some interest in the topic and an ability to be a self-starter. Do a couple of coursera/udacity courses. Stick up a webapp or try to get started with android development or something. Doesn't even have to be exactly aligned with where you want to be, just show some ability, intent and interest.
      - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
        Accurately measuring productivity of programmers in a way which doesn't negatively distort performance... Crack that and you'll not need to program, you'll be rich.
MrJagil 12y ago
Excellent how this problem is continuously attempted to be solved. As a wannabe programmer, one thing I always lacked from these sites was the ability to somehow see my code live. I.e. it's fun to write html and css on codecademy or python from LPTHW or whatever but how on earth do I get it on the web or assembled into .app? In actuality, the complexity that surrounds DNS providers, server apps (or whatever you call filezilla etc), server providers (here i mean heroku, AWS, Cloudflare etc), those weird githubs and repos that people chat about etc etc, is way more deterring than actually learning what a "class" is. Learning is fun; endless googling is not.
- tim333 12y ago
  There are some fairly easy ways to get some code up if you go for the easiest solutions. eg web2py/pythonanywhere.com for Python, http://www.appgyver.com/ http://www.appgyver.com/ for javascript/phonegap apps
  - Spearchucker 12y ago
    And here is my problem with both learning sites like this and search engines like Google. If I search for hosting JavaScript, appgyver.com doesn't feature in the results. In that scenario search is broken.
    - zo1 12y ago
      That's because there is a complete disconnect between "javascript hosting" and "AppGyver". Try being more specific: Search for: "hosting html5 javascript steroids.js" Because AppGyver seems to be related to some sort of JS framework called steroids.js. I'm not going to do it for you, but presumably there is a logical search chain that gets you from "javascript" or "javascript framework" to "Steroids.js". Yes, I search a lot. It's the third most useful tool I have at my human disposal, just after "touch-typing" and "problem-solving ability".
      - Spearchucker 12y ago
        I do the same. Axiomatically, Exercism.io's target audience will not have the experience or knowledge to do that.
orjan 12y ago
The site in question is http://exercism.io/ http://exercism.io/
kbajorin 12y ago
I've had fun doing the haskell challenges. I really like the peer review aspect of it and the git style terminal submissions. But these are just small practice problems and are not geared towards "Teaching you to code well enough to get a job". It's just one of many helpful ways to learn the ins and outs of a particular language.
- watty 12y ago
  > It's just one of many helpful ways to learn the ins and outs of a particular language. That's actually all it takes to get a job programming. Maybe not any job, but certainly a job.
mattmanser 12y ago
It's a nice site and everything, but who is this aimed at? It doesn't seem to be non-coders as far as I can tell. 1. You need to already have a github account 2. The setup assumes you have CLI experience 3. The setup assumes you use linux or a mac (because all non-programmers do that) So has wired misunderstood the target audience, or is the site comically anti-n00b?
- mbubb 12y ago
  You should have a github account if you are learning to program. In my experience interviewers expect it.
  - pjmlp 12y ago
    Startups interviewers looking for university students.
  - jdhawk 12y ago
    Why? I've been a coder for 10+ years, dont have a github account. Never used git. All the enterprise projects I work on chugg along just fine on local source control servers of various flavors (CC, Mercurial, SVN, etc...)
    - clebio 12y ago
      This. I have a github account, and when I wasn't working as a developer, it was more active. Right now, all my code contributions go to closed, company-hosted repos. I'm coding more now than I was before, but you won't find any of that on my github. It's the -- possibly unfortunate -- nature of private industry, but that should be a surprise to no one. Sure, I'd love to work somewhere that lets me contribute to FOSS projects during my work day, but that is a much smaller subset of all jobs that involve software development.
  - umanwizard 12y ago
    I work at a huge company named after a big river in South America. I don't know of anybody in my org that has a GitHub, and maybe like 1/10 of the resumes I see for interview candidates have one. Is this "expectation" a San Francisco thing?
jiggy2011 12y ago
The landing page for this site could stand to be improved, especially if it's target is absolute beginners. * The instructions provided are very Unix specific and assume a reasonable level of familiarity with the command line. Lots of beginners are probably on Windows and not used to using the shell. Much as devs shun them, installable GUI clients have their advantages in this area. * The language used on the first page is still fairly technical, "test suite" for example. * How it works is not made clear, "practice problems" is only mentioned once at the top of the page in a hard to read colour and small font.
- ch4s3 12y ago
  I'm also a little unclear on the why the site leans in a fairly technical direction. I think I'm going to try it out later so that I can get a feel for what's actually required to get going. I really like evaluating these sites to find tools to integrate into our(my company's) training program.
- akavel 12y ago
  In fact, the article ends in mostly the same sentiment expressed by the site's creator: "But she would like to raise money to pay people to improve it. For example, she admits that the site is a bit lack in the usability department. “It’s hard to tell what it is just by looking at it,” she says. “It’s remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it.”"
koevet 12y ago
I find it interesting that the list of supported languages doesn't include Java, which is one of the most, if not the most, requested language - at least in the enterprise space.
- lutusp 12y ago
  I don't know anything specific about the site, but that might reflect an aesthetic bias overcoming the realization that Java is ubiquitous. It all depends on the degree to which a site's operators care about teaching what's being used in real-world projects. If I ran such a site, I might want to suppress my own aesthetic preferences, but even I would probably exclude PHP, as one example, only because it doesn't represent an easy way to create reliable, understandable programs.
  - LLWM 12y ago
    It's a conspicious omission for something that's being sold as "The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job".
    - djur 12y ago
      I've been on exercism for a while and this is the first time I've ever heard such a claim. The headline seems to be based on this weaker remark in the article: "it could help the legions of people out there trying to learn to code well enough to land a job in this fast-growing field". And even that isn't directly based on any quote from anyone related to the site. exercism is definitely a volunteer-driven, open-source operation, and the exercises come from people willing to contribute them. I was going through the OCaml exercises and found that one of them had an error[1]; I submitted a pull request and it was accepted within hours. I think this is a case of a clickbait headline that doesn't do justice to the article nor the subject. [1] Unlike some similar sites, exercism doesn't actually build and test your submissions. This makes the site much simpler and cheaper to run, but also makes a point that simply passing the included test suite is only the first step. But it also sometimes results in sloppily-written exercises for the more marginal languages.
lazyant 12y ago
Good but the title had nothing to do with the content (no mentions of jobs or employability)
mbubb 12y ago
Great site even with the lack of polish. Conceptually I like it. It makes you think more about the full process of writing code than most similar sites. I think what this does well is try to get folks to think about writing something that QA will then test. That is good for me as I come from an operations background and this part of programming is not natural to me. For me it is crank out Bash or Python and keep trying until something works... This is different it is more like "look at this framework, build the piece that is missing" As I am a sysadmin I tend to write tools that only I would look at. Writing something fro a test suite is a great idea. A howto page detailing testing process and a testing 'hello world' would be a good addition. I was surprised that the install didn't involve a github repo install, ie that the install script would not be part of a repo that you clone and then chmod X+ and then install. The benefit of this is that I can keep track of the cli repo and update when needed by watching the repo.
lutusp 12y ago
Article title: "Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job" It's a good thing the site's originator didn't make this claim. Even a first-rate site with an enviable effect on students wouldn't want to say this. Maybe there should be a rating system for article titles, one that measures how far the title deviates from the article itself. In many cases such a title hurts the credibility of the article. In this case, it's obviously a well-intentioned and likely effective teaching method, one that shouldn't have to live down its hyped title.
- teach 12y ago
  I read the headline as semi-ironic. I actually expected it to be an article about how there is (currently) no such site and how bad the vast majority are (mine excepted, of course).
- mattetti 12y ago
  You are totally right, Katrina never ever said anything about exercism being a place to help you land a job. As far as I know, this has never been her goal not does she intend to make it a future goal. Articles are rated based on page views, education doesn't attract tons of reads, so journalists try to be smart and come up with "catchy headlines"
simi_ 12y ago
I maintain a list of resources that also can help programmers get a job: https://github.com/andreis/interview https://github.com/andreis/interview
hliyan 12y ago
I like the concept, but the very first Javascript problem statement starts this way: Bob is a lackadaisical teenager. In conversation, his responses are very limited. Bob answers 'Sure.' if you ask him a question. He answers 'Woah, chill out!' if you yell at him. He says 'Fine. Be that way!' if you address him without actually saying anything. I'm sure this is my personal biases (and possibly age) showing, but this caused me to walk away shaking my head.
- sebular 12y ago
  I agree, it is your age and personal bias. The content of the response strings (I can only assume that's what you're complaining about) has nothing to do with the validity of the challenge. Furthermore, the programming world has always had a goofy and awkward sense of humor.
- kefka 12y ago
  Woah, chill out!
mhurron 12y ago
" Exercises consisting of a test suite and a README are available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift." I wonder why no plain C?
- tejon 12y ago
  Doesn't matter; supports Haskell.
  - mhurron 12y ago
    Which doesn't matter since it supports languages people actually use, except C. What kind of response was that?
- dpritchett 12y ago
  Likely no one's submitted a PR with C exercises yet. github.com/exercism has repos for many languages.
- cschneid 12y ago
  Probably just that nobody has sat down and done it. Maybe that could be you... :) https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#implementing-a-new-language https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...
  - mhurron 12y ago
    > Maybe that could be you... :) I was wondering why no C because that is one I could use, and would like, the practice on. So for everyone else's sake, I won't.
mikeleeorg 12y ago
She admits that the site is a bit lack in the usability department. “It’s hard to tell what it is just by looking at it,” she says. “It’s remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it.” This. I love the fact that people have come to use her site despite its usability problems. To me, it shows there's a real need out there. Admittedly, I also believe having a great UI from the start can be a differentiator (especially in a young market), but products that get used despite a poor UI mean current alternatives were even worse (or non-existent) for these users. I hope she's able to turn this into something to works out for her.
pekk 12y ago
In that case, then maybe people who are refused jobs in this industry due to some superficial reason like age can simply take the course and instantly get a job, right?
lorddoig 12y ago
Without a reason to attract (relative) experts beyond philanthropy I think there's a risk that a ballooning amateur/expert ratio could soon cripple this, as happened to the way Matasano Crypto Challenges used to be run. I hate to be critical as I like the idea, and obviously there's some utility in it for experts as it is but it's much, much less so than for amateurs, and there's no reason to think that this imbalance won't manifest itself sooner or later. I feel this stands a much better chance of solving (or contributing to solving) the education problem and getting good traction if it was positioned to solve a much more general problem - like snippet management - in a really, really good way, and tacked these features on the side.
- mattetti 12y ago
  I see that as a good problem to have, if Exercism gets big enough that it's an issue Katrina will be able to adapt her product to respond to the request. Remember that this is a side, open source project, run by one person ;)
  - lorddoig 12y ago
    Totally agree. A completely off-topic aside (sorry) - I creeped your profile and was wondering, did you create your blog template yourself? It's pretty much exactly what I've been looking for for ages but haven't been bothered to make from scratch.
- vec 12y ago
  It's already happening. I've known about Exercism for a while and used it to teach myself Go. It was very effective and the feedback was immensely helpful, especially at first. But when I went through the Ruby track (a language I'm already quite proficient at), I got almost no feedback, helpful or otherwise. Some of my entries would get one or two "thumbs up"s, but no comments, and most got no responses at all. Now that I've got a pretty good grasp on Go, my last couple of exercises there have started to follow the same trend.
FlyingLawnmower 12y ago
https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases/tag/v1.7.1 https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases/tag/v1.7.1 Looks like there is a Command Prompt executable for windows, but man, it is not easy to find or use for beginners. Hell, I'm still a little confused about how to actually interface with it, (although I am far from an expert on anything).
terryp 12y ago
As someone who has taught himself how to program - badly at times - I applaud these kinds of efforts, but I wonder if they're subverting the actual problem. See, companies - I think - need more technology people. And the pool of technology people is limited. The laws of supply and demand say that limited supply and increased demand will drive up the cost. This is great for individuals, but a losing proposition for companies unless they have limitless resources. The one thing that Starter League, Code Academy and every other site is that they teach individuals the real rudimentary elements of programming. And while vital, these are not a substitute for battle hardened experiences of crappy code, terrible mistakes or the ability to work as an apprentice. I think it's more incumbent on organizations to figure out how to build talent from within which is really a more holistic and basically an amalgamation of everything. - Find motivated individuals. - Validate that they have the skills to be an apprentice. - Accept that they're a beginner and commit to training them. - Learn their strengths and weaknesses and tailor a development plan for them. - Promote the shit out of them and make them your next generation of software, test and system engineers. - When they eventually leave - say to yourself 'Mission Accomplished' and hopefully rely on a talent pipeline. I don't know if this is a teaching hospital methodology or developmental leagues in sports. It's probably somewhere in-between. So these sites are great. The organizations are great. But transforming people into functional experts in the field can only come about with BOTH training and experience. I feel like Exercism only deals with the training aspect, not the experience aspect. My $.02.
- cm2012 12y ago
  I think these courses are the step right before "- Validate that they have the skills to be an apprentice.". If I were going to train someone, I would want it to be someone with the chutzpah to do self directed learning for a period of time.
  - terryp 12y ago
    Totally agree. It's the great 'sword in the stone' methodology that shows if someone has the skill and ability to become a developer. But this is why I think you need both these kinds of sites/programs but also compliment them with some of your own organization's ethos of developing talent.
mendelk 12y ago
After spending a few minutes checking out the site, I thought I'd bookmark it for later, only to realize I'd already bookmarked it in the past. I don't remember ever seeing the site before. Sigh. I clearly need to spend less time on HN proper, and more on the sites it promotes :).
krosaen 12y ago
I wonder if a new position will emerge to help with freshly trained programmers out of programs / curriculum like this. For instance, if a company is willing to pay 100k for an experienced programmer with years of training and experience, what is a fair rate for fresh grads out of a coding boot camp? The trouble, to me, seems that freshly boot camp trained folks apply to the same jobs and it just doesn't make sense. However, if there was an established route, like, coding apprentice that paid 60k and had strong upside at perhaps 10-20k raises per year as they reach the equivalent of junior programmer, that could really open up the market on both sides merely by clarifying expectations. Say a lawyer wants to become a programmer, and he/she goes through a program at The Flatiron School http://flatironschool.com http://flatironschool.com - and the flat iron school can go out to companies to help get them placed, but instead of trying to get them placed at the same jobs / salaries fit for 4 year university grads or programmers with years of experience, it's into positions like I described above - I just think it'd be a much more honest path on both sides.
embwbam 12y ago
Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr) at first, then I got him a job for a company making around $60k after about 8 months. This is how apprentices used to work: the master (mentor is a better word :) would find the work because of his reputation, would handle the most interesting and difficult work, and the apprentice would do the routine stuff and slowly get more and more competent. Has anyone else tried this? I think it would be cool to try it at larger scale, with a whole team of skilled senior devs adopting apprentices to help them with their work.
- tjbiddle 12y ago
  This is what a properly managed internship (Or Jr. Developer's first 3-6 months) should look like.
- terryp 12y ago
  I know that there's some cross-over in the Python/Scientific community with http://software-carpentry.org/ http://software-carpentry.org/ - which is interesting. I also know that in Chicago 'apprenticeship' is a word that is thrown out there a lot. http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/software-apprenticeship/groupons-apprenticeship-program/ https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/software-apprenticeship... https://www.devmynd.com/jobs/apprenticeship https://www.devmynd.com/jobs/apprenticeship
  - ForHackernews 12y ago
    What distinguishes an apprenticeship from just a standard junior developer job?
    - LLWM 12y ago
      Lower pay.
eglover 12y ago
Major fail to me. I've been working on a similar project for 2 years and this may work in a classroom but going through the exercises it's tremendously underdone for the general public. I don't think this is going to go anywhere which is disheartening because I was so excited when I saw the title of the post and read the article. The actual program is a huge let down.
redmattred 12y ago
We're actually conducting a survey aimed at measuring the effectiveness of code bootcamps (as far as job placement rates, average salary, etc.) If you're recently graduated from a code bootcamp, take the survey and share your experiences: http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student
jschulenklopper 12y ago
Interesting idea - and great that so many are helping in contributing exercises. To solve the problem, she created a site last year that presents the practice problems and prevents students from being able to move on to the next ones without submitting a solution to the previous problem. I think that Project Euler, https://projecteuler.net/ https://projecteuler.net/, has a better implementation of this. All problems are available, but they become harder and harder (at least in the beginning - they might level out now). That already is a stimulus to solve the problems in the intended order, in addition to the 'level degrees' awarded after solving a batch of problems. Additionally, the Project Euler forum in which solutions are shared and discussed is only available once you've submitted the correct solution. OK, back to Euler. I'm close to a next level award...
gaius 12y ago
A hipster Project Euler
samuell 12y ago
Reminds me of http://rosalind.info http://rosalind.info, although that is for bioinformatics (but including a basic python introduction part).
Thirdegree 12y ago
I'm actually having a decent bit of fun with this. The problems aren't challenging by a long shot (at least not yet), but I'm enjoying myself.
ilaksh 12y ago
Moving on to the next topic in a class before an individual masters a more fundamental one is a core structural problem with traditional classroom-based instruction. Individual, self-paced computer assisted instruction makes that go away by verifying that foundational skills and knowledge are gained before moving to the next level. This is not limited in any way to programming or any particular skill or knowledge area. Having a mentor or tutor adds another level of enhancement. But don't undervalue the ability of a computer to objectively measure an individuals performance and tailor the learning material to their own pace.
lubaru 12y ago
I myself am in a position where I'm treated like an apprentice, and it's great. I've only been programming for a couple of years and the rate at which I'm learning, and the broad swath of knowledge I feel like I'm getting from the senior developers is great.

250 points by cyphersanctus 12y ago

Tyrannosaurs 12y ago

Based on many of the people I've worked with "well enough to get a job" is a pretty low bar to clear.

mmcru 12y ago
these comments are always discouraging to me. i work in a different field (sysadmin), and i've been struggling to get a job programming. am i that bad at programming? or that bad at finding work? i feel like i know the basics of several languages as well as html, css, sql and git. i wrote an IT-ticket system for a healthcare clinic in python consisting of a basic html form and a SQL database backend (i know this isn't terribly impressive to adept programmers, but i've been applying to the most entry-level programming positions). i also specialize in powershell, which is object-oriented, even if it isn't used for enterprise level web apps. and that hasn't been nearly enough to get a job, at least in pittsburgh.
- FreedomFiber 12y ago
  None of the languages you listed are technically programming languages (I guess PowerShell could be considered one, but it's more for automation rather than programming actual applications). Maybe you're using the wrong terminology during your interviews.
  - mmcru 12y ago
    oh definitely, i meant that i knew the basics of python, ruby, and javascript, as well as the other technologies (non-programming languages, as you said).
- bovermyer 12y ago
  Soft skills are more important than tech skills, especially at entry level. It usually becomes pretty apparent in the interview whether someone is capable of problem solving or not; the interviews conducted for my department are purely to see if the candidate is a cultural fit. We don't even do technical interviews, though occasionally we'll do a code challenge to separate two very close candidates. My point here is that you should take a look at your personal presentation and see if there's anything you can tweak to improve your interview performance.
- Widow 12y ago
  Full disclosure, I just graduated and really don't know anything of value yet BUT imho building things that are functional and working outside of your dev environment should have more of an influence on your job prospects than the stupid coding exercises.
- yarper 12y ago
  Do you have a good github account? Most (decent) employers will probably take this in lieu of a technical interview. You have to remember that its not just them testing you - it's you testing them. As a newbie coder you want to be in a good team where you can learn good practices from solid performers. I mean put it this way - if you were in a team and everyone was at a low skill level, do you think you'd get a good time of things from sales/marketing/all the other stakeholders?
  - mmcru 12y ago
    i do have a github, but i don't think i would call it "good": https://github.com/mmcru?tab=repositories https://github.com/mmcru?tab=repositories i can definitely improve it, and that is something i have been working on. thanks for the advice though; i really appreciate it. i agree with you that ideally i would be working under some more senior programmers to improve my skills.
    - ejstronge 12y ago
      I just took a look - I noticed you've got a couple of websites in your list of repositories. Why not host some of these on a personal website? Also, adding a README could help people understand what the scope and goal of each project is (and also help them figure out how to use it/test it).
    - yarper 12y ago
      I also took a look at your contributions - looks a bit spotty! https://github.com/mmcru https://github.com/mmcru No activity in the last month? Something I personally would pick up on.
      - mmcru 12y ago
        you're definitely right. unfortunately i've been busy with a move and learning angular, which was new to me, so i haven't had much new code. i plan on adding more this week. thanks for your advice =]
- Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
  Entry level can be pretty different. They're looking at potential rather than ability and things can be competitive (depending on the specific skills or organisation). I'm really thinking about programmers with 5 - 10 years of experience who still struggle to reason their way out of a wet paper bag or produce anything but the most obvious and narrowly scoped solution to problems.
- IgorPartola 12y ago
  Don't feel bad. The thing is that "good enough to get a job + that's a low bar" means that the people end up way over their heads and usually don't work out. I have interviewed lots of people. Some needed jobs badly. They came in, knowing HTML/CSS + enough jQuery to make a pretty web page, and were applying for a systems architect position. We obviously rejected them, but lots of companies cannot tell between truly qualified people and those that are not. This works both ways: lots of unqualified/underqualified people get hired and then you hear stories like "you won't believe what my co-worker did", but it also means that qualified candidates do get passed up. Basically, don't get discouraged, and don't worry about others getting jobs. Just keep getting better at what you do, and most importantly work on projects that you can show off. I found that these where the best way to get noticed/get hired.
- ssalenik 12y ago
  What is your background? I know that for a lot of corporate type gigs HR is really more concerned with whats on your CV than what your actual skills are. For many, a good GPA in a programming related program will get you an interview and the rest is soft skills. So, I feel like if your background isn't directly programming related then you really have to look for smaller companies/startups or via recommendations.
- 3pt14159 12y ago
  Start by always using the correct spelling, grammar, and capitalization. Get a senior developer to look over your code samples and give you feedback, then make sure to have a project out there that people can see and you can link to.
- nogridbag 12y ago
  Since you don't have a background in software, I would suggest specializing in the language/framework/utility of the day - something like Angular, React, etc. You will have a leg up on the vast majority of developers (the ones who don't read HN). I work for a small startup in the NYC metro area and of course I agree with the parent post. We have a fairly terrible interviewing process. Candidates are phone screened by our non-technical manager and are usually selected for interviews based on domain experience. Nearly all of the people I'm forced to interview have the same background (bachelors in India, sole language is Java, 5-20 years experience in finance industry most coming from big banks Citigroup, BoA, etc). My interview process consists of an onsite coding problem, which is of course controversial. But when none of the people you interview have a github account (some have not even heard of github) or have any sample work, I believe it's important. The vast majority of the candidates sadly cannot create a List and populate it with integers in their language of choice.
  - mmcru 12y ago
    thanks a lot for your post. input from active professionals is invaluable to me. i've actually been working on learning angular for the past few weeks. i've stopped updating my github in that time since i'm just doing basic stuff, but once i finish some more tutorials and documentation i plan on building an angular project to display on my github. are there any particular features that would really catch your eye as someone who hires programmers? any suggestions regarding the coding interview problem? i see http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-Questions/dp/098478280X http://www.amazon.com/Cracking-Coding-Interview-Programming-... recommended a lot.
    - Bahamut 12y ago
      I wouldn't worry too much about coding interview questions, especially if you're looking to just enter the profession. The most important aspects are showing a willingness to learn and an ability to think critically about problems.
      - nogridbag 12y ago
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  I wouldn't take it too seriously. At the risk of sounding pretentious, the skill level of developers on HN and proggit seem to be much higher than average. For every guy who writes a sweet project in meteor and shows it off to everyone there are 1000 Enterprise Java programmers who do it as a 9-5 and scoff at the idea of hobby programming. If you're passionate and put forth an effort to keep a relevant skill set you're already doing better than most imho.
- 3minus1 12y ago
  Not having experience is a huge barrier to clear. When trying to get my first job I only had a minor in CS. I had 13 interviews before I got a job, and I had to continually revise my resume. Don't give up. Focus on breadth vs. depth in terms of jobs and knowledge. And don't worry about minimum years experience requirements on job postings. You can get a job that is for someone with 3-5 years experience; they just won't pay you as much.
- VLM 12y ago
  Getting past HR is a totally different and unrelated skillset from the craft of programming.
- lazyant 12y ago
  An option is to market yourself as "DevOps" engineer, seriously.
- Nursie 12y ago
  The problem is that paper experience is not actually a good indicator of anything, but lack of it will keep you out of a job. Recently I've been working with a team of 3 other engineers. 2 Were average if a touch lazy. The third had ~30 years experience on paper. He was without a doubt the most incurious, unproductive, useless programmer I've ever encountered. He must have committed less than 1% of the new code over the last 10 months and most of that was wrong. He was a net drain on team productivity. However the rest of us delivered and now he gets to put another successful project on his resume and look to a recruiter/HR person like he's a useful, productive guy. Where someone like you who likely has some raw talent and just needs some battle-hardening... you may find getting a foot in the door quite hard. I don't really know how to solve this.
  - Nursie 12y ago
    2 more things. Firstly, I suppose one solution would have been for management to pay attention to the atmosphere.on the team and do some sort of productivity assessments on their staff. Secondly - to get a start somewhere good I would (if you don't have a tech degree or experience) show some interest in the topic and an ability to be a self-starter. Do a couple of coursera/udacity courses. Stick up a webapp or try to get started with android development or something. Doesn't even have to be exactly aligned with where you want to be, just show some ability, intent and interest.
    - Tyrannosaurs 12y ago
      Accurately measuring productivity of programmers in a way which doesn't negatively distort performance... Crack that and you'll not need to program, you'll be rich.

MrJagil 12y ago

Excellent how this problem is continuously attempted to be solved. As a wannabe programmer, one thing I always lacked from these sites was the ability to somehow see my code live. I.e. it's fun to write html and css on codecademy or python from LPTHW or whatever but how on earth do I get it on the web or assembled into .app? In actuality, the complexity that surrounds DNS providers, server apps (or whatever you call filezilla etc), server providers (here i mean heroku, AWS, Cloudflare etc), those weird githubs and repos that people chat about etc etc, is way more deterring than actually learning what a "class" is. Learning is fun; endless googling is not.

tim333 12y ago
There are some fairly easy ways to get some code up if you go for the easiest solutions. eg web2py/pythonanywhere.com for Python, http://www.appgyver.com/ http://www.appgyver.com/ for javascript/phonegap apps
- Spearchucker 12y ago
  And here is my problem with both learning sites like this and search engines like Google. If I search for hosting JavaScript, appgyver.com doesn't feature in the results. In that scenario search is broken.
  - zo1 12y ago
    That's because there is a complete disconnect between "javascript hosting" and "AppGyver". Try being more specific: Search for: "hosting html5 javascript steroids.js" Because AppGyver seems to be related to some sort of JS framework called steroids.js. I'm not going to do it for you, but presumably there is a logical search chain that gets you from "javascript" or "javascript framework" to "Steroids.js". Yes, I search a lot. It's the third most useful tool I have at my human disposal, just after "touch-typing" and "problem-solving ability".
    - Spearchucker 12y ago
      I do the same. Axiomatically, Exercism.io's target audience will not have the experience or knowledge to do that.

orjan 12y ago

The site in question is http://exercism.io/ http://exercism.io/

kbajorin 12y ago

I've had fun doing the haskell challenges. I really like the peer review aspect of it and the git style terminal submissions. But these are just small practice problems and are not geared towards "Teaching you to code well enough to get a job". It's just one of many helpful ways to learn the ins and outs of a particular language.

watty 12y ago
> It's just one of many helpful ways to learn the ins and outs of a particular language. That's actually all it takes to get a job programming. Maybe not any job, but certainly a job.

mattmanser 12y ago

It's a nice site and everything, but who is this aimed at? It doesn't seem to be non-coders as far as I can tell. 1. You need to already have a github account 2. The setup assumes you have CLI experience 3. The setup assumes you use linux or a mac (because all non-programmers do that) So has wired misunderstood the target audience, or is the site comically anti-n00b?

mbubb 12y ago
You should have a github account if you are learning to program. In my experience interviewers expect it.
- pjmlp 12y ago
  Startups interviewers looking for university students.
- jdhawk 12y ago
  Why? I've been a coder for 10+ years, dont have a github account. Never used git. All the enterprise projects I work on chugg along just fine on local source control servers of various flavors (CC, Mercurial, SVN, etc...)
  - clebio 12y ago
    This. I have a github account, and when I wasn't working as a developer, it was more active. Right now, all my code contributions go to closed, company-hosted repos. I'm coding more now than I was before, but you won't find any of that on my github. It's the -- possibly unfortunate -- nature of private industry, but that should be a surprise to no one. Sure, I'd love to work somewhere that lets me contribute to FOSS projects during my work day, but that is a much smaller subset of all jobs that involve software development.
- umanwizard 12y ago
  I work at a huge company named after a big river in South America. I don't know of anybody in my org that has a GitHub, and maybe like 1/10 of the resumes I see for interview candidates have one. Is this "expectation" a San Francisco thing?

jiggy2011 12y ago

The landing page for this site could stand to be improved, especially if it's target is absolute beginners. * The instructions provided are very Unix specific and assume a reasonable level of familiarity with the command line. Lots of beginners are probably on Windows and not used to using the shell. Much as devs shun them, installable GUI clients have their advantages in this area. * The language used on the first page is still fairly technical, "test suite" for example. * How it works is not made clear, "practice problems" is only mentioned once at the top of the page in a hard to read colour and small font.

ch4s3 12y ago
I'm also a little unclear on the why the site leans in a fairly technical direction. I think I'm going to try it out later so that I can get a feel for what's actually required to get going. I really like evaluating these sites to find tools to integrate into our(my company's) training program.
akavel 12y ago
In fact, the article ends in mostly the same sentiment expressed by the site's creator: "But she would like to raise money to pay people to improve it. For example, she admits that the site is a bit lack in the usability department. “It’s hard to tell what it is just by looking at it,” she says. “It’s remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it.”"

koevet 12y ago

I find it interesting that the list of supported languages doesn't include Java, which is one of the most, if not the most, requested language - at least in the enterprise space.

lutusp 12y ago
I don't know anything specific about the site, but that might reflect an aesthetic bias overcoming the realization that Java is ubiquitous. It all depends on the degree to which a site's operators care about teaching what's being used in real-world projects. If I ran such a site, I might want to suppress my own aesthetic preferences, but even I would probably exclude PHP, as one example, only because it doesn't represent an easy way to create reliable, understandable programs.
- LLWM 12y ago
  It's a conspicious omission for something that's being sold as "The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job".
  - djur 12y ago
    I've been on exercism for a while and this is the first time I've ever heard such a claim. The headline seems to be based on this weaker remark in the article: "it could help the legions of people out there trying to learn to code well enough to land a job in this fast-growing field". And even that isn't directly based on any quote from anyone related to the site. exercism is definitely a volunteer-driven, open-source operation, and the exercises come from people willing to contribute them. I was going through the OCaml exercises and found that one of them had an error[1]; I submitted a pull request and it was accepted within hours. I think this is a case of a clickbait headline that doesn't do justice to the article nor the subject. [1] Unlike some similar sites, exercism doesn't actually build and test your submissions. This makes the site much simpler and cheaper to run, but also makes a point that simply passing the included test suite is only the first step. But it also sometimes results in sloppily-written exercises for the more marginal languages.

lazyant 12y ago

Good but the title had nothing to do with the content (no mentions of jobs or employability)

mbubb 12y ago

Great site even with the lack of polish. Conceptually I like it. It makes you think more about the full process of writing code than most similar sites. I think what this does well is try to get folks to think about writing something that QA will then test. That is good for me as I come from an operations background and this part of programming is not natural to me. For me it is crank out Bash or Python and keep trying until something works... This is different it is more like "look at this framework, build the piece that is missing" As I am a sysadmin I tend to write tools that only I would look at. Writing something fro a test suite is a great idea. A howto page detailing testing process and a testing 'hello world' would be a good addition. I was surprised that the install didn't involve a github repo install, ie that the install script would not be part of a repo that you clone and then chmod X+ and then install. The benefit of this is that I can keep track of the cli repo and update when needed by watching the repo.

lutusp 12y ago

Article title: "Out in the Open: The Site That Teaches You to Code Well Enough to Get a Job" It's a good thing the site's originator didn't make this claim. Even a first-rate site with an enviable effect on students wouldn't want to say this. Maybe there should be a rating system for article titles, one that measures how far the title deviates from the article itself. In many cases such a title hurts the credibility of the article. In this case, it's obviously a well-intentioned and likely effective teaching method, one that shouldn't have to live down its hyped title.

teach 12y ago
I read the headline as semi-ironic. I actually expected it to be an article about how there is (currently) no such site and how bad the vast majority are (mine excepted, of course).
mattetti 12y ago
You are totally right, Katrina never ever said anything about exercism being a place to help you land a job. As far as I know, this has never been her goal not does she intend to make it a future goal. Articles are rated based on page views, education doesn't attract tons of reads, so journalists try to be smart and come up with "catchy headlines"

simi_ 12y ago

I maintain a list of resources that also can help programmers get a job: https://github.com/andreis/interview https://github.com/andreis/interview

hliyan 12y ago

I like the concept, but the very first Javascript problem statement starts this way: Bob is a lackadaisical teenager. In conversation, his responses are very limited. Bob answers 'Sure.' if you ask him a question. He answers 'Woah, chill out!' if you yell at him. He says 'Fine. Be that way!' if you address him without actually saying anything. I'm sure this is my personal biases (and possibly age) showing, but this caused me to walk away shaking my head.

sebular 12y ago
I agree, it is your age and personal bias. The content of the response strings (I can only assume that's what you're complaining about) has nothing to do with the validity of the challenge. Furthermore, the programming world has always had a goofy and awkward sense of humor.
kefka 12y ago
Woah, chill out!

mhurron 12y ago

" Exercises consisting of a test suite and a README are available in Clojure, CoffeeScript, C#, C++, Elixir, Erlang, F#, Go, Haskell, JavaScript, Lua, Objective-C, OCaml, Perl5, Python, Ruby, Scala, and Swift." I wonder why no plain C?

tejon 12y ago
Doesn't matter; supports Haskell.
- mhurron 12y ago
  Which doesn't matter since it supports languages people actually use, except C. What kind of response was that?
dpritchett 12y ago
Likely no one's submitted a PR with C exercises yet. github.com/exercism has repos for many languages.
cschneid 12y ago
Probably just that nobody has sat down and done it. Maybe that could be you... :) https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.md#implementing-a-new-language https://github.com/exercism/x-api/blob/master/CONTRIBUTING.m...
- mhurron 12y ago
  > Maybe that could be you... :) I was wondering why no C because that is one I could use, and would like, the practice on. So for everyone else's sake, I won't.

mikeleeorg 12y ago

She admits that the site is a bit lack in the usability department. “It’s hard to tell what it is just by looking at it,” she says. “It’s remarkable to me that people have figured out how to use it.” This. I love the fact that people have come to use her site despite its usability problems. To me, it shows there's a real need out there. Admittedly, I also believe having a great UI from the start can be a differentiator (especially in a young market), but products that get used despite a poor UI mean current alternatives were even worse (or non-existent) for these users. I hope she's able to turn this into something to works out for her.

pekk 12y ago

In that case, then maybe people who are refused jobs in this industry due to some superficial reason like age can simply take the course and instantly get a job, right?

lorddoig 12y ago

Without a reason to attract (relative) experts beyond philanthropy I think there's a risk that a ballooning amateur/expert ratio could soon cripple this, as happened to the way Matasano Crypto Challenges used to be run. I hate to be critical as I like the idea, and obviously there's some utility in it for experts as it is but it's much, much less so than for amateurs, and there's no reason to think that this imbalance won't manifest itself sooner or later. I feel this stands a much better chance of solving (or contributing to solving) the education problem and getting good traction if it was positioned to solve a much more general problem - like snippet management - in a really, really good way, and tacked these features on the side.

mattetti 12y ago
I see that as a good problem to have, if Exercism gets big enough that it's an issue Katrina will be able to adapt her product to respond to the request. Remember that this is a side, open source project, run by one person ;)
- lorddoig 12y ago
  Totally agree. A completely off-topic aside (sorry) - I creeped your profile and was wondering, did you create your blog template yourself? It's pretty much exactly what I've been looking for for ages but haven't been bothered to make from scratch.
vec 12y ago
It's already happening. I've known about Exercism for a while and used it to teach myself Go. It was very effective and the feedback was immensely helpful, especially at first. But when I went through the Ruby track (a language I'm already quite proficient at), I got almost no feedback, helpful or otherwise. Some of my entries would get one or two "thumbs up"s, but no comments, and most got no responses at all. Now that I've got a pretty good grasp on Go, my last couple of exercises there have started to follow the same trend.

FlyingLawnmower 12y ago

https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases/tag/v1.7.1 https://github.com/exercism/cli/releases/tag/v1.7.1 Looks like there is a Command Prompt executable for windows, but man, it is not easy to find or use for beginners. Hell, I'm still a little confused about how to actually interface with it, (although I am far from an expert on anything).

terryp 12y ago

As someone who has taught himself how to program - badly at times - I applaud these kinds of efforts, but I wonder if they're subverting the actual problem. See, companies - I think - need more technology people. And the pool of technology people is limited. The laws of supply and demand say that limited supply and increased demand will drive up the cost. This is great for individuals, but a losing proposition for companies unless they have limitless resources. The one thing that Starter League, Code Academy and every other site is that they teach individuals the real rudimentary elements of programming. And while vital, these are not a substitute for battle hardened experiences of crappy code, terrible mistakes or the ability to work as an apprentice. I think it's more incumbent on organizations to figure out how to build talent from within which is really a more holistic and basically an amalgamation of everything. - Find motivated individuals. - Validate that they have the skills to be an apprentice. - Accept that they're a beginner and commit to training them. - Learn their strengths and weaknesses and tailor a development plan for them. - Promote the shit out of them and make them your next generation of software, test and system engineers. - When they eventually leave - say to yourself 'Mission Accomplished' and hopefully rely on a talent pipeline. I don't know if this is a teaching hospital methodology or developmental leagues in sports. It's probably somewhere in-between. So these sites are great. The organizations are great. But transforming people into functional experts in the field can only come about with BOTH training and experience. I feel like Exercism only deals with the training aspect, not the experience aspect. My $.02.

cm2012 12y ago
I think these courses are the step right before "- Validate that they have the skills to be an apprentice.". If I were going to train someone, I would want it to be someone with the chutzpah to do self directed learning for a period of time.
- terryp 12y ago
  Totally agree. It's the great 'sword in the stone' methodology that shows if someone has the skill and ability to become a developer. But this is why I think you need both these kinds of sites/programs but also compliment them with some of your own organization's ethos of developing talent.

mendelk 12y ago

After spending a few minutes checking out the site, I thought I'd bookmark it for later, only to realize I'd already bookmarked it in the past. I don't remember ever seeing the site before. Sigh. I clearly need to spend less time on HN proper, and more on the sites it promotes :).

krosaen 12y ago

I wonder if a new position will emerge to help with freshly trained programmers out of programs / curriculum like this. For instance, if a company is willing to pay 100k for an experienced programmer with years of training and experience, what is a fair rate for fresh grads out of a coding boot camp? The trouble, to me, seems that freshly boot camp trained folks apply to the same jobs and it just doesn't make sense. However, if there was an established route, like, coding apprentice that paid 60k and had strong upside at perhaps 10-20k raises per year as they reach the equivalent of junior programmer, that could really open up the market on both sides merely by clarifying expectations. Say a lawyer wants to become a programmer, and he/she goes through a program at The Flatiron School http://flatironschool.com http://flatironschool.com - and the flat iron school can go out to companies to help get them placed, but instead of trying to get them placed at the same jobs / salaries fit for 4 year university grads or programmers with years of experience, it's into positions like I described above - I just think it'd be a much more honest path on both sides.

embwbam 12y ago

Last year, I tried something new. One of my friends, a Mathematician, and the smartest guy I know, was working at the library. I told him he should get into programming, and hired him as my "Apprentice". I was mentoring him directly. He was working right next to me. He was learning a lot, I was enjoying the teaching, but I could also hand him boring stuff (CSS) and he would love to do it. I paid him peanuts ($12/hr) at first, then I got him a job for a company making around $60k after about 8 months. This is how apprentices used to work: the master (mentor is a better word :) would find the work because of his reputation, would handle the most interesting and difficult work, and the apprentice would do the routine stuff and slowly get more and more competent. Has anyone else tried this? I think it would be cool to try it at larger scale, with a whole team of skilled senior devs adopting apprentices to help them with their work.

tjbiddle 12y ago
This is what a properly managed internship (Or Jr. Developer's first 3-6 months) should look like.
terryp 12y ago
I know that there's some cross-over in the Python/Scientific community with http://software-carpentry.org/ http://software-carpentry.org/ - which is interesting. I also know that in Chicago 'apprenticeship' is a word that is thrown out there a lot. http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship http://www.8thlight.com/apprenticeship https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/software-apprenticeship/groupons-apprenticeship-program/ https://engineering.groupon.com/2012/software-apprenticeship... https://www.devmynd.com/jobs/apprenticeship https://www.devmynd.com/jobs/apprenticeship
- ForHackernews 12y ago
  What distinguishes an apprenticeship from just a standard junior developer job?
  - LLWM 12y ago
    Lower pay.

eglover 12y ago

Major fail to me. I've been working on a similar project for 2 years and this may work in a classroom but going through the exercises it's tremendously underdone for the general public. I don't think this is going to go anywhere which is disheartening because I was so excited when I saw the title of the post and read the article. The actual program is a huge let down.

redmattred 12y ago

We're actually conducting a survey aimed at measuring the effectiveness of code bootcamps (as far as job placement rates, average salary, etc.) If you're recently graduated from a code bootcamp, take the survey and share your experiences: http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student http://www.codejobs.io/surveys/codebootcamp/student

jschulenklopper 12y ago

Interesting idea - and great that so many are helping in contributing exercises. To solve the problem, she created a site last year that presents the practice problems and prevents students from being able to move on to the next ones without submitting a solution to the previous problem. I think that Project Euler, https://projecteuler.net/ https://projecteuler.net/, has a better implementation of this. All problems are available, but they become harder and harder (at least in the beginning - they might level out now). That already is a stimulus to solve the problems in the intended order, in addition to the 'level degrees' awarded after solving a batch of problems. Additionally, the Project Euler forum in which solutions are shared and discussed is only available once you've submitted the correct solution. OK, back to Euler. I'm close to a next level award...

gaius 12y ago

A hipster Project Euler

samuell 12y ago

Reminds me of http://rosalind.info http://rosalind.info, although that is for bioinformatics (but including a basic python introduction part).

Thirdegree 12y ago

I'm actually having a decent bit of fun with this. The problems aren't challenging by a long shot (at least not yet), but I'm enjoying myself.

ilaksh 12y ago

Moving on to the next topic in a class before an individual masters a more fundamental one is a core structural problem with traditional classroom-based instruction. Individual, self-paced computer assisted instruction makes that go away by verifying that foundational skills and knowledge are gained before moving to the next level. This is not limited in any way to programming or any particular skill or knowledge area. Having a mentor or tutor adds another level of enhancement. But don't undervalue the ability of a computer to objectively measure an individuals performance and tailor the learning material to their own pace.

lubaru 12y ago

I myself am in a position where I'm treated like an apprentice, and it's great. I've only been programming for a couple of years and the rate at which I'm learning, and the broad swath of knowledge I feel like I'm getting from the senior developers is great.